Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/720

 704 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

guished from purpose. Desire and will are simply motive. It is a natural force and does not differ except in degree of complication from any purely mechanical or physical force. But evolution has gone on to another stage. In much the same way as, by adopting a new method, it passed from chem- ical to biotic organization, it has, by making another new departure, passed from genetic to telic causation.

The direction of progress was seen at the outset to be toward the greater concentration of cosmic energy, toward making the universal force, whose quantity cannot change, perform more work. This law continues in operation to the last. Telic causation is only another way of accomplishing this end. Just as biotic organization was called in where chemical organization could go no farther, so teleology is resorted to at the point where genesis ceases to be effective. In the last stages before this point is reached the chief agent in nature is will, but, as already stated, its action is direct, the same as mere force in any other form. The new agent differs primarily from all others in being indirect. The essential characteristic of the final cause is indirection.

It is a common figure to represent any force as blind. The conative force is still more frequently so characterized. Desire sees no obstacles. Love is blind and blind impulse rules the lower world. But while results are accomplished by this direct method according to the intensity of the impulse and the strength of the organism, it is evident that there is a limit to the achievements of will. Desire must go unsatisfied if its object cannot be attained within this limit of physical strength. With the advance of biotic organization desire increases more rapidly than does the power to overcome obstacles, and the number and magnitude of the obstacles to the attainment of desired ends thus rapidly increase. Any new advance must look to over- coming these difficulties and to clearing the way for the accomplishment of higher results. Still again the biological law of advantage comes forward. The new device is the final cause. It consists of a mechanism for the utili- zation of force that is running to waste, and in this respect the economic prin- ciple of all evolutionary progress is employed, but the application of this principle is wholly unlike any hitherto made.

The conative power was seen to reside in an organized nervous system with an increasing integration of its parts in subordination to a general directive center, the brain. The physical progress continued to all outward appearances unchanged except in degree in passing from the conative state which is genetic into the noetic state which is telic, but by insensible degrees a new psychic faculty was evolved. This new psychic faculty in its devel- oped state is called the intellect, but it had its nascent and inchoate stages, which, though the same in essence, scarcely deserve that name. The name, however, is unimportant. It is only needful to understand its nature.

Its physical nature may be safely said to be unknown. A theory is that there takes place within the substance of the brain a miniature repro-